“Not like you tried all too hard to stop it, when it did.”
A shrug. “Well, in for a penny.”
Sami rolled her eyes. “Look,” she told Dee, “you were already sure the Maartensbecks couldn’t be trusted in the clinch, considering who we’re chasing. And it strikes me A-Cat probably knows a dirty deal when she hears one—better than us, given we’re not exactly social.”
Dee had to smile at that, since it was nothing but true; hell, even Chatwin knew it. As they both watched, she sketched a little bow, shrugged again, tossed her head like a hillbilly beauty queen. And drawled back, without any more or less malice inherent in the words than usual—
“Well, ain’t you sweet, still. Princess.”
—
When most people talked about the Maartensbecks, they concentrated on their twinned academic prowess and charity-work, not
to mention their storied geneaology—elliptical mentions of them stretched all the way back to the ninth century, when Holland separated from Frisia to become a county in the Holy Roman Empire, and a man named Auutet from Maarten’s Beck ended up qualifying as a student of the Corpus Iuris Civilis at the newly-founded University of Bologna. For those in “the life,” however, the name carried a very different sort of weight.
“They’re Dutch, and all they hunt is vampires,” Moriam Cornish had told her eldest daughter one night, during a Hammer Horror movie marathon. “Sure, they don’t use a ‘Van’ when they sign anymore, but you do the math.”
Though not rich in a conventional sense, their consistent ability—and willingness, even when it cost them bad enough to denude whole generations—to tackle the Rolls-Royce of monsters head-on had produced a wide-flung funding network of grateful, financially liquid patrons. And with the foundation of the Maartensbeck Archive in 1968, they’d begun to amass a vault full of magical artifacts other people wouldn’t touch with a literal ten-foot pole: grimoires, cursed objects, holy weapons, all of which the family’s surviving members either caretook or banked accordingly, loaning them out at a fair rate of interest to anyone who could afford their late fees, and was in search of a way to kill the unkillable.
Occasionally, someone would be dumb enough to think they could go full supervillain with whatever it was they’d borrowed, then find out better once the Maartensbecks came to retrieve it; Dee had seen photos, and the results weren’t pretty. These crafty stealth badasses might have multiple degrees and class out the wazoo, but they sure weren’t fussy about coming down hard on whoever they considered evil, a category whose boundaries sometimes appeared to shift at whoever was currently heading the Maartensbecks’ boardroom table’s will.
For the Cornishes, who’d received their initial email while recuperating after the M-vale break in a motel Sami swore up and down didn’t even have WiFi, contact had been made in the well-preserved person of matriarch Ruhel Maartensbeck, legendary Professor Maks’s only granddaughter. She was a silver fox of a woman with Helen Mirren style and Vanessa Redgrave pipes, turning up to their highly public first meeting—at yet another all-night roadside greasy spoon, somewhere on the Jersey Turnpike—dressed all head to toe in retired teacher drag so good Dee would’ve pegged her for a civilian, at least from across the room. Then she drew close enough to sit down, revealing sensibly low-heeled lace-up shoes with enough tread for a high-speed chase, a no-grip Vidal Sassoon crop, and the discreet lines of a high-calibre pistol packing modified rounds unde
r one arm. The overall effect was of a stretched-out Dame Judi Dench, voice almost accentless and tartly crisp, as she slid her long legs under the plastic table and opened by saying—
“Congratulations on your recent return to circulation, my dears. Believe me, I’m not usually one to interrupt a celebration, but...well, the truth is, my family finds we have a problem that requires an outsider’s touch, albeit one educated in very—specific ways. I know you’ll understand what I mean, given your background.” A pause. “Beside which, we’ve heard such good things of you both, it seemed a pity to look anywhere else.”
Dee had to bite down on the urge to laugh, hard. But a quick glance Sami’s way told another tale; she had a look on her face that read as partly stunned, part wistful. This was civilized talk, Mrs. Morgan-grade, of the sort that hadn’t come her way in years—not since that last phone call, when Dee’d tried not to let herself overhear as Sami told her former “mother” how she not only wasn’t gonna make it for Christmas, but wouldn’t be able to tell her where to get in touch with her anymore. ‘Cause yes, what those cops had told her was true, to a point: they had just killed a bunch of people in a Beantown bar, deliberately and with premeditation, just like the charges said. But only their bodies, because the things inside those bodies weren’t the people they were claiming to be at all, what with the whole tempting transients down to the basement, then killing and cooking them routine they’d gotten into recently...let alone the additional part about feeding the remains to their customers as a Tuesday Night Special afterwards.
Thing was, when stuff’d already gone that far, that was pretty much the point where prayer and a 911 call stopped being any sort of use at all, and white magic against black took over; magic plus a bullet, or a load of cold iron buckshot mixed with salt. ‘Cause just as Jeptha’d always said, Exorcist movie franchise aside, sometimes the Power of Christ alone wasn’t up to compelling shit.
And: Oh God, Samaire, she could remember Mrs. Morgan crying, tinnily, on the other end. I told you it was a bad idea to take up with her. Told you that nice as she seemed, she was probably just as psychologically disturbed as that man, her father...oh baby, and you were doing so well, too, even after Jesca! My smart, smart girl. Where’s it all going to >end now?
Good enough question, back then; even better question seven years on, parade of victories balanced against the occasional defeat or not. Though it wasn’t like Dee really had the first or faintest idea of an answer, either way.
Ruhel Maartensbeck had come equipped with two fat files that night. one was full of background stuff on them, which Dee found creepy, enough so to mainly skip over, but she’d seen Sami studying it off and on since, apparently fascinated by how the Maartensbecks had managed to trace the exact moment where the long-defunct European Cornîches had broken off into their only slightly less so Americanized brand, after a younger brother of witch-finder Guilliame Cornîche converted to Hugenot Protestanism, fleeing France for Québec in the wake of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The other file, meanwhile, was about Miss M’s “little problem” itself, a crisis forty years in the making—one that’d started all the way back in 1971, with Professor Maks’s tragically quick and surprisingly unheralded passing, from Stage Four prostate cancer...
...except, well, that turned out to be a bit of a face-saving fib, on the Maartensbecks’ part: i.e., for “prostate cancer,” read “undeath.”
“‘Vampire-hunter turned vampire, no news at eleven,’” Dee’d commented, munching a fry. “Understandable, right? I mean, that’s really gotta rankle.”
“Somewhat, yes.”
Sami, nodding: “Be hard to cover up, though. Unless—oh, tell me you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” Dee’d demanded, watching Ruhel Maartensbeck nod, sadly. But then the penny dropped, with an almost audible clink—‘cause while she might not’ve been able to get much schooling beyond what her Spec-4 called for (high school equivalency, plus some Engineering Corps courses and a whole two years of Explosive Ordnance Disposal training), no one could accuse Dionne Cornish of being completely unable to follow things through using plain old logic.
“You stuck him in the vault,” she said, out loud. “‘Course you did. ‘Cause given that place is like a toxic dump, ‘cept for magic crap, there must be some real full-bore sons of bitches trying to slip in there—and a live-in vampire? Best security system money can’t buy. Don’t even have to feed him, just let him keep what he kills, long as he doesn’t actually turn any of ‘em...”
“Well done, Miss Cornish the Elder.” Ruhel sighed. “Yes, that was the plan—his idea, actually, a contingency protocol decided on long before it happened, which he made me swear to honor, if and when. Imprison him in there and wait for the vampire who killed him to come free him, as a trap. But it never showed up, and after a certain amount of time, I simply ceased periodically dropping by to check on...that thing.”
“Not like it was really your grandpa, anymore.”
“No, of course not. You understand: everything I know I learned from him, and it knows everything he did, so it knows not to even bother claiming to be him. Vampires aren’t people; not the people you hope they are, anyhow.”
Sami, took into care far too young to remember Jeptha and Moriam’s bedtime stories, raised one eyebrow. “So what is it, then?”
“A demon wearing my grandfather’s skin which says horrifying things to me in a beautiful voice, such as ‘oh, you’re pregnant—it’s a boy, how lovely. Babies taste so good, or so I’ve heard.’ Not to mention one entirely capable of biding its time, fashioning an escape plan and just waiting, as such things can, until I’m too old to do anything about it.”